


Change of Hearts; or, Things You Cannot Do With One Cardiovascular Organ

by thatsweetmysteryoflife



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, I apologize for nothing, someone gets tased
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsweetmysteryoflife/pseuds/thatsweetmysteryoflife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and the Meta-Crisis Doctor have been left on the alternate Earth, and the Doctor is trying and failing miserably to adjust to life in the slow lane. He’s having the worst time trying to simply comprehend that he’s part human and only has one heart, meaning he can’t be as reckless as he was when he was a Time Lord. Sometimes, this backfires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change of Hearts; or, Things You Cannot Do With One Cardiovascular Organ

This was getting out of hand.

Rose had sighed and kept her mouth shut as the Doctor— _her_  Doctor, now—had stumbled his way through his first few weeks of life as a human with the mind and memories of a Time Lord, but this had honestly gone too far. It’d been months now, and she thought he had figured out that there were really, truly some things he just couldn’t do anymore.

And now he was sitting there insisting he was absolutely fine, while his gangly limbs twitched and spasmed around him.

After jumping in front of a policeman.

Who had been holding a  _Taser_.

And had been aiming it at a Judoon.

“Okay, no,” she said decisively, holding up a hand to stop his slightly slurred protestations. Lowering herself to the ground to sit next to him as he leaned against the wall and jolted every so often, Rose reached over to take one twitching hand. “You’ve got to stop this, honestly you do. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you do that again, or maybe give me one instead, I’m not sure which.”

“But I am  _fine_ , see, perfectly fine, this’ll just wear off in a minute or so and I’ll be right as rain,” the Doctor muttered, his reassuring smile slightly marred by the manic twitching of his head.

“You are  **not**!” she burst out, then bit her lip in regret as he jerked back and banged his head into the wall in his surprise. “You are not,” she said, using a much softer tone. “I’m sure the Judoon ambassador truly appreciates you saving him from that policeman, but you obviously are taking it worse than he would’ve.”

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head, preparing to argue, but Rose hastily placed a hand over his mouth. “No, come on, just listen,” she urged. “He’s a rhino. A rhino from SPACE, okay? With armor and really thick skin and god knows what else. I’d be willing to bet he’d just shake it off if it were him that got hit, not you, yeah?” Ignoring his slightly surly mutters about the Judoon not actually being rhinos, Rose continued. “And then there’s you. I know—and you should know too, by now—I know exactly how a human body reacts when it gets electrocuted. It’s not pretty.”

“Done it before!” the Doctor protested weakly, “Me and that stupid kite of Franklin’s, AND on Magnos-Five, and it turned out just fine every—”

“Oh my god, no, just LISTEN to me!” she snapped. “That was  **before**! I thought you had got over this, but you obviously haven’t, and I don’t know what I have to do to smack some sense into that incredibly dense head of yours!” Punctuating each of her words with a finger jabbing into his chest, Rose declared, “You. Are. Human. Now. You. Are. Not. A. Time. Lord.”

“Am,” he mumbled, but Rose shook her head.

“You’re not,” she said, more gently than before. “You’ve got the mind and memories of a Time Lord, but your body is human. Donna gave you that. So yeah, you’ve electrocuted yourself before—” She paused, and rolled her eyes. “And we’re going to have a chat about that in a bit, but my point is, you’ve never been electrocuted in  _this_  body before. So any expectations about how this body’s going to react to electricity are wrong, yeah?” Rose stared at him expectantly.

“Suppose so,” he agreed slightly reluctantly, but with a small grin.

“Good,” she said, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in to rest against her side. “Promise you won’t do something like that again, all right? You scared me half to death.”

“Can’t promise,” he began,  and as she drew in a quick breath to give him what-for, he hastily continued, “but I can try.” Rose let out the breath she had drew with an exasperated huff, but the expression on her face was fond.

“I guess that’s all I can ask for, then,” she said, and shifted her arm to curl around his waist in a sort of half-hug. Feeling his body still shaking sporadically against her side, she let her head fall to rest on top of his and suggested, “Maybe we should just stay here for a while till you stop wiggling all over the place.”

“Might be a good idea,” the Doctor muttered into her shoulder, as one long leg twitched on the ground beneath him.

\------

“So,” Rose said a little while later, “Magnos-Five, huh? Why’d you have to electrocute yourself there?”

He paused, thinking for a minute, and then with absolute and utter finality declared simply, “Whales.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was a Christmas fic written for darkdraculina on Tumblr! Forgive the ridiculously punny title; I couldn't resist.


End file.
